Greater Sudbury’s top companies can find great talent through immigration.
In fact, one hire at a local business ended up transforming the company’s hiring and recruitment practices. In the span of just a few short years, Maestro Digital Mine went from a predominantly Canadian workforce to one that is now 70 per cent international.
It all started with Nataly Argüello.
She was interviewed for a position with Maestro Digital Mine a few years ago. The first part of the interview was in English, and it didn’t go so well. For the second part, they asked her to respond in her native Spanish and were absolutely wowed. Maestro CEO Michael Gribbons was so impressed, in fact, that he changed his company’s hiring and HR practices to be more inclusive for international candidates.
Maestro is a manufacturer of Internet of Things devices and communication networks, otherwise complex electronics and associated firmware and software. Their products currently ship to 40 countries globally.
Gribbons says that Greater Sudbury is known as a hub of excellence for its best practices in mining. It is not known as an electronic manufacturer like other major centres in Ontario.
This results in a gap in the local labour pool, Gribbons says, that can hinder the potential growth of any company that would like to remain in the city.
Gribbons opted to recruit talent from manufacturing centres into Greater Sudbury.
“Before the Rural and Northern Immigration Pilot Program (RNIP), it was extremely difficult to convince anyone of talent to leave Southern Ontario to come to Greater Sudbury. Our original candidates were educated at the Canadian universities of Waterloo, London, Guelph, Ottawa, Toronto and Queens. As such, we had to compete with Google, Amazon and many other technology companies for the same talent. If we could hire them, it would be for them to get enough experience and move away. The RNIP program changed EVERYTHING,” says the CEO.
Since bringing Nataly on board, the company has hired an additional 15 immigrants in their Greater Sudbury office. It’s a change that began about five years ago. “We have only had two mis-hires,” says Gribbons.
Nataly’s story
Currently the Director of Marketing at Maestro, Nataly had never even heard of Greater Sudbury until a couple of years ago. She grew up in Cali, the third-largest city in Colombia, which (in 2023) has a population of over 2.8 million.
She left to attend school in a small town in Tennessee, where she studied business administration with an emphasis on management. A strong student, she was there on scholarship. After completing her bachelor’s degree, she worked for a year as a staffing assistant at Manpower.
She returned to Colombia and worked first at a marketing agency, next for an insurance agency that insured houses in New York and New Jersey. She returned to school specializing in international business with a focus on Asia Pacific, as that is a crucial market for Latin America. She also worked as an operations manager at iTEG, an import-export business, where she dealt with the logistics of items arriving from China, the US and Mexico. The company’s headquarters were in Cali but had offices around the world.
“Cali is a very big city and it’s very competitive. It’s also too crowded and the opportunities are scarce,” she says. “My little sister told me about this conference some college from Canada was having at the Intercontinental Hotel and I thought, okay, let’s check it out.”
It was there, in July of 2017, that she learned about Cambrian College. “I loved it! I had no idea that there was a small town called Greater Sudbury in Ontario. I started researching and liked what I saw. When I went to school in Tennessee it was in a small town, so I liked the idea of being in a smaller setting. In Cali you can spend two hours in traffic jams. Greater Sudbury seemed like a very nice town—I also liked the idea of the 300 lakes.”
She mentioned it to her common-law partner, who was immediately on board.
Nataly applied to the International Business program at Cambrian. It offered a co-op component, which was very important to her. She got in and arrived in Greater Sudbury on January 17, 2018, with her partner, Carlos. It was the middle of winter.
After graduating from Cambrian in May 2019, she began her job search. Interestingly, Nataly never actually applied to work at Maestro. She had responded to a job posting at the city for SAMSSA (now MineConnect); though they didn’t choose her, one of her interviewers spoke to Gribbons about her. Maestro’s then-Director of Marketing and Communications called, saying she heard Nataly was looking for a job; she was invited to come to the office for an interview.
“I was very thankful for that, it was wonderful, because you start getting stressed. Your paperwork to stay here depends on whether you get a job or not,” says Nataly. “Thankfully the interview process went well and I started in August of 2019 as the International Business Development Coordinator for Latin America.”
She did some inside sales and marketing, mostly helping with Maestro’s expansion in Latin America. When the director who hired her left, the company was on the hunt for someone to fill her shoes. Nataly asked if they would be willing to wait, to see if she could possibly step into the role. Over the next six months she took on more and more responsibility, including leading the marketing initiatives, social and other media. She was offered her current position in June of 2021.
“Nataly, as well as many other immigrants, came into our company in one role and was evaluated for several months for her underlying talents outside of her resume. Some immigrants, like her, moved to a better role that was well-suited for their talents,” says Gribbons.
Culture shift
When she started working at Maestro, the person who is now the COO—Jahanzeb Sohail, originally from Dubai—was the only employee who was not a local.
Staff at Maestro were a great support. She was waiting on paperwork and the company helped her get her work permit extended. She also realized that applying via the Rural Northern Immigration Partnership (RNIP) program would be best for her and her partner.
“We’re a little bit older, so we’re looking to start a family here and that’s what the RNIP program is looking for,” she says. They helped her apply for permanent residency, which she received last February.
City staff involved in the Local Immigration Partnership and RNIP program were a great help; they were in charge of the process and answered all of her questions.
“I think employers here are sometimes a bit hesitant, since we come from another country and you don’t know what you’re going to get. But once they open up to the idea they realize there are a lot of people with good occupations: a lot of engineers are coming here, people with Masters’ degrees, people who do have the experience necessary. It may not be Canadian experience, however, it is a global market now. There’s a lot we can give,” she says.
She is a big fan of the RNIP program.
“I would definitely recommend it. At least for me, it was an easier path. If you are very young you can still apply through the express entry or other programs, but if you’re looking to settle in a community like Greater Sudbury and you’re hoping to start a family, this would be a good way to go.”
Life in Greater Sudbury
Nataly does miss her home but has noticed the recent growth of the Latin community in Greater Sudbury.
“We’re getting there. There’s a new local market with stuff from Colombia that I miss so much. Last week I was able to cook this dish that is from Bogotá, the capital—ajiaco—because I was able to get the ingredients,” she says.
“The community has always been helpful and open, but it’s even more so now with all of this new immigration that we’re getting,” she says.
She takes advantage of several WhatsApp groups, which include chats for Latinos, Latinas and Colombians. Last year everybody got together for a celebration of Colombian independence in Bell Park.
“The City has also been helping a lot, making these things possible. They’re opening up spaces for groups to organize, so it’s great.”
Never much of an outdoors person before, being from a big city, now she loves to be outside.
“Here I’ve been able to explore, go kayaking, go on a boat. We got a little inflatable boat so we take it out to the lake here and do all these things that I never did before. We ice skate on the lake—it’s an amazing experience.”
“There are so many activities that we have been able to do here that we would not be able to do back home. Canada ended up being a great opportunity,” says Nataly. “It has been quite an adventure.”
Additional resources